This section can never hope to catalog all gender-bending fanfiction. Its purpose is to showcase fanfics above a certain minimum quality level which apply gender-bending to characters who previously lacked it or wasted the opportunity to explore what they did... though the odd low-quality story may be added just because it keeps coming to the admin's attention. Future plans to add quality ratings should mitigate the risk of doing this.

When a misunderstanding causes young Naruto to truly fear for his life, Kyuubi grants him a fragment of power. As an instinctive reaction, Naruto uses it to shapeshift into the least threatening form he can imagine... which happens to be female. However, his chakra control isn't yet good enough to shift back.

This is more a FemNaru story that takes an alternate approach to setting up than a gender-bending story. However, because the author makes good use of this approach, it has several interesting properties not present in the vast majority of other FemNaru stories:

Naruto doesn't get to sidestep dealing with identity issues the way s/he would in a pure alternate universe or blunt them with "Well, I was born this way , so I guess this is how it's supposed to be," as is usually the case in stories where FemNaru grew up under some kind of locked transformation.

While timeskips and flashbacks are used in the storytelling, Naruto/Naru's comfort with being a girl feels realistic because it comes from years of growing used to it and making friends she didn't have as a boy.

Unlike in an AU or locked transformation story, Naruto/Naru actually does have to wrestle with the decision of what to do when she gains the option of changing back.